mayjawintastawm

Still mixed light precip in Aurora. Temps seem about the same all around the region. I wonder if it's an intensity/lift problem.

Because if you can ski well in the East (bulletproof ice, rain with trash bags for apparel, "packed powder"= just about anything) and put up with the crowds, you will forever enjoy yourself out West even on a day the locals would consider crap.

IMO, having been through both ('93 I was in PA), '93 was more impactful. It was over a longer period of time, the very heavy snows were over a MUCH larger area that does not typically have very heavy snows (heck, Wolf Creek gets 52 inches all the time!!) and the recovery period (floods in NE/IA this year very much excepted) was considerably longer in most places. For example, major highways in eastern PA were closed for 2-3 days- this is in an area with 4 million + people.

Yikes, you got 'em. So sorry.

Walked around the neighborhood to assess things early this AM. Two trees down in our neighborhood, prob early afternoon yesterday. One was a 2 foot diameter 30 foot spruce but it was planted in an area where its roots couldn't spread too far, so it uprooted without much difficulty. The other just broke from the sheer weight of snow + lush needles + wind. The dogs were intrigued by both. Fortunately they both fell away from the houses so no property damage. SO glad we spent the $ to have the trees pruned !

And COS had a 97 MPH gust earlier this afternoon. We have (about, variable) 8 inches on the ground now of paste. A co-worker's house near Parker had a tree fall on it, creating a new bedroom skylight but without the window part. Not fun.

Fairly copious warm air with this dynamic storm is a bit of an anomaly for the High Plains this time of year. Will be interesting to see what really materializes. Will we get a blizzard, or a hurricane? GFS at 00z is juicy (maybe frozen juice, or a slushie) and windy.

NWS BOU AFD has the word "bombogenesis" in it this afternoon. I don't think I've seen that word in an AFD where I live since I moved from MA in 2010.

00Z GFS looks like crap for a big storm for most of Eastern CO other than the northeast corner. Way more progressive and suppressed south and east compared to before. It actually has the heaviest precip in the area north and east too, like Cheyenne. Hopefully things will not go that way with the other models.

I know, except Pennsylvania would have had like 30 straight hours of that. We woke up to about 1/4" sleet on the ground which made for an hour or two of very slick going till the sun rose and melted it in about 12 seconds. Really feels like spring out there today!

I know what to do... go play in Durango for a few days.

I don't blame you for calling BS on me, but at 7:00 I measured 1" in the yard and at 8:24 I measured 5.3". Of course it's extremely fluffy, doubt it's more than 0.2" WE. This band is the heaviest I've seen in over a year! Chinook, I'm very hesitant to ask how much you (haven't) got tonight... shaft-o-rama.

My sense in talking to a bunch of CO natives over the past few years is that the things that are missing are some big early and more late winter/spring upslope events they remember from when they were growing up. May-June used to be reliably greener, according to a PhD I know who is now in his 70s. The past few March/Aprils have not been real wet generally, Junes have been very hot, and Halloween, which was formerly an adventure in freezing one's butt off underneath one's costume, is a much milder affair than days of yore. Let's see what the next couple months bring... we could be pleasantly surprised. Historically, it's interesting when you think about when the Front Range was first settled by those from the Eastern US about 100-130 years ago. Water booms and busts are normal, with busts more common. A wet few decades lured many to the area, then the Dust Bowl jarred everyone back to reality. Of course, if you go to the New England board, you'd think they expect an epic blizzard every 10 days between Thanksgiving and Easter. It really was NOT like that in the 1970s other than a few memorable events.

I've been in FL the past 5 days. Came back to not much on the ground. Looks like thunder was recorded in a brief squall Saturday afternoon with 0.02" WE.

I grew up near Boston, and remember those late '70s winters well. 76-77 was followed by the once-in-a-lifetime 77-78. That plus a couple hurricanes were what really got me into weather. In fact I still have a small vial of snowmelt from the 2/6-8/78 blizzard in a box in the basement. If we got that here next year, I would be VERY happy. (VERY unlikely) I'm guessing my yard has just shy of average-for-date snowfall this year too, around 25 inches. Not as bad as last year. And we do have March and April to go yet.

Yeah, I fed 'em a bunch of fake data yesterday. I'm sure it'll disappear soon. Mwahahahaha..... Also, I'm flying into DEN next Monday AM, so the timing would be perfect.

Amazing stuff in the PNW, more meh around here. NWS 6-10 and 11-14 day forecasts have been pretty consistent on much better than average chances of cold and wet around here. Anything in the models? Even fantasy range would be OK, at least it's something to think about.

That's an enormous amount for Seattle. The hills there will make it really tough to get around- good thing it's on a weekend!

yeah the Wed "storm" (I don't really think it rose to that level) was kind of weird... the foothills themselves did well, but typically we either have good amounts south, or good amounts north. This time the good amounts were right in Denver. We got just under 3 inches at my place south of town.

We finished with 5". Thinking 15-20:1, it was pretty standard fluff. We've done pretty well in Jan compared to many- around 18" when you add everything up, and at least 1" melted, especially given the concrete 6" we had early in the month, some of which is still glaciating in the shade.

Another overperformer! Just over 3" as of 7 AM and still coming down pretty good. Was almost 50 degrees when I went to bed last night, now 23.

I think we got about the same in north Aurora where I work. No opportunity to measure, just multiple trips between buildings between 7:30 and now. Quite a wall of snow as I arrived at work about 7:25! Visibility was down to about 150 yards for 20-30 minutes.

Well, we mainly missed out on this one too, almost everyone did. None of the models were right: EC was south and GFS was north and whatever happened was fast and even further south. We eked out a good 2-2.5" but that's about it. Pretty though, and pretty windy, though nothing spectacular. Seems like 80% of storms around here move faster than everyone thinks they will.

Chinook, I think you win the prize for "most justified weather paranoia". You can't buy a flake east of Boulder and north of Thornton this year!

Wow, that's one hell of a gradient. Wall of continuous heavy snow as soon as you get close to the Divide, nothing at all east of there. Something just looks too weird about that to believe. I'm guessing it's more likely that either it'll be more patchy, or perhaps (less likely) some more will leak over than WPC says.